RUSHWORTH, John (c.1612-90), of Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx., and Battersea, Surr.

Rushworth belonged to a Yorkshire family that had moved to Northumberland in the late sixteenth century. His father leased half of Acklington Park, near Alnwick, from the 3rd earl of Northumberland, and the herbage of the park from another of the earl’s tenants, Roger Thorpe, the father of the future parliamentarian lawyer Francis Thorpe*.40Estate Accts. of the Earls of Northumb. ed. M.E. James (Surt. Soc. clxiii), 23, 28, 159, 160, 203; Hist. Northumberland, v. 380. In later life, Rushworth would refer to his family as ‘poor in wealth yet rich in reputation [in Northumberland]’.41Northumb. RO, ZBL 193: Rushworth to William Blackett, 15 June 1676. According to the antiquary Anthony Wood, Rushworth attended Oxford University during the last years of James I’s reign, but left without matriculating and entered himself as a student at Lincoln’s Inn.42Ath. Ox. iv. 280. It was at this point, apparently, that Rushworth discovered his real passion – not the common law but the observation and recording of ‘state affairs’. In his Historical Collections he reveals that he began to attend ‘occurrences of moment’ in the law courts at Westminster and Whitehall during the personal rule of Charles I, and in some cases, including the Ship Money trial of 1637, to take shorthand notes of the speeches.43Rushworth, Hist. Collns. i. preface; ii. 480.

Rushworth’s public career seems to have begun in the spring of 1638, when the corporations of Newcastle and Berwick appointed him their London solicitor at salaries of £30 and £4 respectively.44Brand, Newcastle, ii. 363, 364; Berwick RO, B1/9, f. 172. He may well have owed his appointment at Berwick to his kinsman, the town’s recorder (Sir) Thomas Widdrington*. The often-repeated assertion that Rushworth married one of Widdrington’s sisters is based on nothing more than supposition and is entirely groundless (Widdrington had no sister named Hannah, and he referred to Rushworth as his ‘cousin’, never as his ‘brother’). In fact, Rushworth would marry, in 1644, the daughter of a wealthy London clothworker, John Eldred (who made bequests in his will to John Goodwin and several other godly ministers).45St Stephen, Coleman Street, London par. reg. (bap. entry 8 Jan. 1627); St Mary, Abchurch par. reg.; PROB11/177, ff. 362r-v; Hedley, Northumb. Fams. ii. 130-1; J.C. Hodgson, ‘A ped. of Widdrington of Cheeseburn Grange’, Arch. Ael. ser. 3, vi. 35, 38. Rushworth’s connection with Newcastle was possibly through his ‘loving cousin’ Sir Thomas Tempest, who had appointed him a trustee of his estate in 1637.46D’Ewes (C), 328-30; Recs. of the Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. R. Welford (Surt. Soc. cxi), 357. Tempest, one of County Durham’s most eminent lawyers, was evidently well known to Newcastle corporation and may have been acting as one of its legal advisers in the 1630s.47Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 504; Ms 543/32, Newcastle Chamberlains’ Acct. Bk., f. 210; Ms 543/33, f. 148. But the making of Rushworth’s career as an intelligencer and chronicler was his appointment on 25 April 1640 as an assistant to Henry Elsynge, the clerk of the House of Commons in the Short Parliament.48CJ ii. 12b. Rushworth’s nomination was apparently at Elsynge’s request, although how the clerk had become acquainted with him we shall probably never know. The House ordered that Rushworth ‘should not use his writing of stenography to take men’s speeches, but only to take orders truly and enter reports faithfully’.49CJ ii. 12b; Procs. Short Parl. 203.

The possibility that Rushworth had more powerful patrons than Widdrington and Elsynge is suggested by two pieces of evidence from August 1640. The first is his appointment by Secretary Francis Windebanke* as a royal messenger between the court and Berwick.50Sl. 1519, f. 14. Rushworth states in his Collections that he went north to observe ‘the passages of the camp at Berwick [in 1639] ... the fight at Newburn ... the treaty at Ripon’ merely out of curiosity.51Rushworth, Hist. Collns. i. preface. However, it is clear that his presence in the north in 1640, and possibly in 1639 also, was the result of his employment on crown business. Apparently he had connections at court, and the most likely figure to have recommended him was the future parliamentary grandee Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, the lord admiral during the bishops’ wars. Rushworth would have been known to Northumberland through Widdrington, the earl’s retained legal counsel, and possibly also through the earl’s northern steward Hugh Potter*. By the autumn of 1640, Potter was conferring with Rushworth about the earl’s parliamentary affairs.52Alnwick, Y.V.1d, bdle. 1: Berwick private guild to Rushworth, 18 Oct. 1640; Potter to the private guild [Nov. 1640]. The second piece of evidence is Rushworth’s formal admission to Lincoln’s Inn, which was performed at the request of Tempest, the newly appointed attorney general for Ireland.53LI Admiss. i. 244; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 244. Rushworth’s manucaptors were the north country duo of George Collingwood and William Lambton, who was another Tempest client.54Lincoln’s Inn Lib. Admiss. Bk. 7, f. 13v; LI Admiss. i. 244. Tempest, too, may have been part of the Percy network, although he probably owed his office as attorney general to Northumberland’s court ally and Widdrington’s electoral patron, the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†).55Infra, ‘Sir Thomas Widdrington’. Rushworth was linked therefore with a powerful and strongly anti-Scots circle of northern peers and gentlemen.

Rushworth retained his place as assistant to Elsynge in the Long Parliament, and although the order of 25 April still stood, he was evidently taking down speeches in shorthand – much to the disapproval of Sir John Hotham*.56CJ ii. 42a; Northcote Note Bk. 20, 21; Procs. LP i. 396, 400, 406. As clerk assistant, he performed a variety of tasks for the Commons, including those of messenger and intelligencer. He was despatched into the midlands and the north on numerous occasions in 1641 and 1642. Indeed, one London newsbook claimed that he had been ‘employed near twenty times last summer [1642] between London and York’. At least one of these missions was initiated on the motion of John Pym*, for whom Rushworth sometimes acted in a secretarial capacity.57Add. 18777, f. 98v; SP28/143, pt. 6, f. 11v; CJ ii. 265a, 269a, 360b, 586b, 599a, 607b, 852a, 883a, 896b; LJ iv. 397a; v. 36a, 296b; D’Ewes (C), 10, 264, 271, 381; PJ ii. 102, 147, 258-60, 264-5, 313, 368, 401; iii. 28-9, 33, 293, 340; The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 13 (21-28 Mar. 1643), 102 (E.94.14); Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 23; Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 208; J. Adamson, ‘Pym as draftsman’, PH vi. 134, 139. He may have been in Hull on 23 April 1642, when Hotham shut the town’s gates on the king, for on 2 May, he made a lengthy relation to the House of recent events at Hull and the opposition that the parliamentary committee at York had encountered from the king and his supporters. It was probably Rushworth who penned the inflammatory publication Letter Sent by a Yorkshire Gentleman, recounting the committee’s treatment. In private, he informed Sir Simonds D’Ewes* that he had received help on this mission from Sir William Constable*, the brother-in-law of Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Baron Fairfax [S]*.58PJ ii. 258-60; J. Peacey, ‘‘Fiery spirits’ and political propaganda: uncovering a radical press campaign of 1642’, Publishing Hist. lv. 17.

By August 1642, Rushworth was writing to Lord Fairfax in terms that betray a solid conviction in the rectitude of Parliament’s cause and an admiration for Fairfax’s son, Sir Thomas Fairfax*.59Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 18. Early in October, he advised Lord Fairfax to break off the ‘treaty of pacification’ he had signed with some of Yorkshire’s royalists, warning him that Parliament would ‘utterly disagree’ with his proceedings.60Belvoir, Mss Historical etc. 1641-52, QZ.22, f. 26. Later that same month, the Committee of Safety* sent Rushworth to liaise with Fairfax ‘that by him we may understand the truth of affairs with you and your desires to us for the advance of the present service’. This and other evidence of Rushworth’s links with the Fairfax circle again point to his intimacy with Widdrington, who was Lord Fairfax’s son-in-law and man-of-business.61Infra, ‘Sir Thomas Widdrington’; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 23; CJ ii. 839b.

Rushworth’s reasons for continuing to serve Parliament after 1641, beyond a general dislike of prelacy and Catholicism and the financial inducements of remaining in the Commons’ employ, are not clear.62Ath. Ox. iv. 282. In March 1643, he was appointed with another of Fairfax’s kinsmen, James Chaloner*, as a messenger between Parliament and its committee to treat with the king at Oxford – an assignment he probably owed to the earl of Northumberland, who headed Parliament’s negotiating team.63CJ iii. 8b; LJ v. 654b. In recognition of Rushworth’s ‘many faithful services’, the Commons drew up an ordinance in July for appointing him cursitor of Yorkshire and Westmorland.64CJ iii. 145b, 162b, 170b. Unfortunately for Rushworth, it does not appear that the Lords ever passed this piece of legislation. Although probably ambivalent about the wisdom of bringing the Scots into the civil war, he licensed a pro-Scottish publication in the summer of 1643 and urged Berwick’s governors to cooperate with the parliamentary delegation for negotiating a Scottish alliance. On 1 November, he took the Covenant.65Berwick RO, B1/9, f. 260; CJ iii. 297b; HMC Portland, i. 140; Regs. of the Worshipful Co. of Stationers (1913), i. 74.

Rushworth had performed the services of a parliamentary propagandist at least once after the outbreak of civil war, and his expertise in this field is further suggested by the Commons’ appointment of him in April 1644 as licenser of newsbook publications.66CJ ii. 852a; iii. 457b-458a; Regs. of the Worshipful Co. of Stationers, i. 111-247. Under Rushworth’s oversight, Parliament’s flagship newsbook Mercurius Britanicus acquired a new editor, Marchamont Nedham, and a more critical outlook towards the parliamentarian lord general and peace-party grandee Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.67Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers, 151, 298-9. Rushworth’s role in regulating the flow of information to Parliament and into the public domain increased in March 1645, when he became secretary to Sir Thomas Fairfax as commander-in-chief of the fledgling New Model army.68CJ iv. 86a; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 359. Rushworth claimed that he obtained this post because he was ‘near of kin’ to Fairfax – although the only known family connection between the two men was through Rushworth’s ‘cousin’ Widdrington.69Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 207-8. Rushworth accompanied Fairfax on the army’s campaigns of 1645-6, writing numerous letters to Parliament detailing its victories, and its need of regular supply, and overseeing payments from its war-chest amounting to over £10,000.70SP28/140, pt. 2, ff. 13-65; HMC Portland, i. 242-3, 331, 336.

His place at Fairfax’s side gave him considerable scope for influence and patronage in his own right. Indeed, many suitors for Fairfax’s favour – including Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, Oliver Cromwell*, Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and Bulstrode Whitelocke* – wrote directly to Rushworth, asking him to procure commissions from the general or assurances that no troops would be quartered on their land.71Add. 70006, f. 113; Sl. 1519, ff. 96, 102, 135, 137, 141, 146; Harl. 7001, f. 198; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, Newcastle Common Council Order Bk. p. 211. As early as November 1645, he was identified in the minds of contemporaries with the Independent interest – hence his removal as licenser by the Presbyterian-dominated Commons on 9 March 1647.72Add. 72437, f. 119; CJ v. 109a. His private letters to Lord Fairfax and to his assistant-secretary, William Clarke, reveal a firm conviction in the justness of the army’s cause and a deep hostility towards the Scots and their English parliamentary allies.73Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 295, 343, 353, 355-8, 359-60, 364-5, 367-71, 379-84; Clarke Pprs. i. 24, 214-16, 219; I. Gentles, New Model Army (Oxf. 1992), 484-5. We are also afforded occasional glimpses of his role as a publicist for the army and even as an actor in its political designs.74Clarke Pprs. i. 24, 81, 151; [C. Walker*], Hist. of Independency (1648), 43 (E.463.19); Holles Mems. (1699), 126, 147, 176; W. Waller*, Vindication of the Character and Conduct of Sir William Waller (1793), 175; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 43-4, 173, 185.

He remained at the centre of army affairs throughout 1648 and 1649, and his correspondence suggests that he was broadly in favour of Pride’s Purge, if not necessarily of the king’s trial – which he attended – and execution.75Sl. 1519, f. 188; Clarke Pprs. ii. 62; The Lives of those Eminent Antiquaries Elias Ashmole...and Mr William Lilly (1774), 95; Muddiman, Trial, 130. At least one of his friends believed they were of one mind in rejecting arguments against taking the Rump’s Engagement, abjuring monarchy and the House of Lords, on grounds of conscience: ‘conscience is to be guided by what is done or left undone, with reference to what is commanded or forbidden in matter [sic] of religion ... and such who go beyond that boundary do superstitiously delude themselves and their consciences’.76Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS CCLXVII, f. 27. Evidently trusted by the new regime, he was appointed one of four official licencers in October 1649, with special reference to The Perfect Diurnall.77Stationers’ Reg. i. 328, 331. However, there is no evidence that he edited this or any newsbook, as some authorities have claimed.78P.W. Thomas, Sir John Berkenhead 1617-79 (Oxf. 1969), 63, 251; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 185; ‘John Rushworth’, Oxford DNB. Ever eager to exploit opportunities for profit, he was part of a consortium of leading radicals and ‘new merchants’ that came together in the late 1640s to colonise the Bahamas.79S.A. Green, J.T. Hassam, R.C. Winthrop jnr. ‘The Bahama islands’ (Mass. Hist. Soc. ser. 2, xiii), 5; R. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution (2003), 523-7.

Despite reports that Rushworth was holding secret talks with the king’s Presbyterian sympathisers in 1650, it is revealing that when Fairfax resigned as commander-in-chief in July of that year over scruples about the projected invasion of Scotland, Rushworth did not follow his example – at least, not immediately.80HMC Portland, i. 586, 587-8. It was only after he had accompanied the army into Scotland and seen it defeat the Scots at Dunbar in September that he resigned his secretaryship.81HMC Portland, i. 528, 533; CJ vi. 464b; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 247, 322; Aylmer, States’s Servants, 260. Moreover, he was employed by the council of state as an army intelligencer well into 1651.82CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 317, 354. At the same time, he remained on good terms with Fairfax and was probably a regular guest at York House – the retired lord general’s London residence.83HMC Leyborne-Popham, 9; Burton’s Diary, ii. 351; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 198.

Rushworth’s reason for quitting the army was probably more financial than political. Freed from his attendance upon Fairfax and Cromwell, he was able to reap the benefits of having been called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn back in 1647.84LI Black Bks. ii. 375. Like Thomas Wharton* and numerous other northern barristers, he specialised in buying forfeited estates from the treason trustees as an attorney for the original owners or their agents. Among his clients were Major-general John Lambert*, John Bright* and several prominent royalists, including his kinsman by marriage Sir William Withrington*.85E121/3/4/142; E320/ZZ22; SP28/288, f. 57; Lancs. RO, DDK/1461/1; Notts. RO, DD/4P/21/2, 4; Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Br P57/3-5, P185b(v); CCC 1120, 1324, 1736, 1958, 2038, 2230, 2342, 2394, 2418, 2509, 2600, 2632, 2637, 2642, 2679, 2976, 3212; CCAM 931; HMC Buccleuch, i. 311; Recs. of the Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, pp. xxxiii, 152-3, 156, 191, 267, 321, 372, 381; Abstracts of Yorks. Wills ed. Clay, 105-6; D. Farr, John Lambert (Woodbridge, 2003), 156, 158. He was also kept busy during the 1650s as a parliamentary solicitor for William Craven, 1st Baron Craven (a kinsman of the Fairfaxes) in his protracted dispute with the Rump, and as a London man-of-business for various northern interests, most notably Newcastle’s corporation and Merchant Adventurers’ Company.86Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/2, Newcastle Common Council Order Bk. for Sealing Docs. f. 185v; MD.NC/2/2, pp. 14, 19, 56-7, 69, 79, 168, 255, 337, 481; GU.MA/3/3, ff. 104, 107v, 108, 119v, 139-40; R. Gardner, Englands Grievance Discovered, in Relation to the Coal-trade (1655), 67; Extracts from the Newcastle upon Tyne Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 132; Extracts from the Recs. of the Merchant Adventurers of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ed. F. W. Dendy (Surt. Soc. ci), 55, 63-4, 68, 72-5, 80, 82, 84-6, 139; Extracts from the Recs. of the Co. of Hostmen of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ed. Dendy (Surt. Soc. cv), 110, 117, 124, 125; M. Brod, ‘The uses of intelligence: the case of Lord Craven, 1650-60’, in Revolutionary England, c.1630-c.1660 ed. G. Southcombe, G. Tapsell (2017), 110, 111-12, 116, 121. It was Rushworth who recommended the social reformer (and Rushworth’s kinsman by marriage) Samuel Hartlib to the corporation as its London agent, and the two men often worked closely together on the town’s behalf.87Add. 21425, f. 57; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 337; GU.MA/3/3, ff. 119v, 122v, 139-40, 143; Tyne and Wear Archives, GU.HO/1/1, Minute Bk. of the Newcastle Co. of Hostmen, pp. 40-1, 167; Berwick RO, B1/11, ff. 20v, 33v, 56v, 76v, 84, 100v; Co. of Hostmen of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ed. Dendy, 110; Brand, Newcastle, 363. When he was not attending his professional affairs or collecting his fees as a registrar of the court of admiralty (an office that netted him about £210 under the protectorate) he was compiling his Historical Collections – a project that excited the interest of Protector Oliver and Protector Richard* and their councils.88SP46/97, f. 148; PRO31/17/33, pp. 55-6; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 315; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 143; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 260; ‘John Rushworth’, Oxford DNB. Rushworth was to dedicate volume one, published in 1659, to Protector Richard.89Rushworth, Hist. Collns. i. dedication.

Although he had resigned as Berwick’s solicitor in 1649 – citing ‘weightier occasions’, but probably because of the meagre salary – he remained one of the town’s most effective lobbyists in London.90Berwick RO, B1/10, ff. 146v, 147; B1/11, ff. 56v, 76v, 84; B9/1, f. 46; P. Gaunt, ‘‘To create a little world out of chaos’: the protectoral ordinances of 1653-4 reconsidered’, Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 123-4. When Berwick’s MP in the second protectoral Parliament, Colonel George Fenwick, died in March 1657, Widdrington recommended Rushworth to the corporation as his replacement.91Berwick RO, B1/11, f. 142. On 2 April, after ‘due consideration of the many good offices Mr Rushworth hath been ever ready to do, and hath done, for the town’s welfare, and of the Lord Widdrington’s desire and advice therein, he [Rushworth] being a gentleman worthy and able of such an high employment’, the freemen returned him with their ‘unanimous, free, full and general consent’.92Berwick RO, B1/11, ff. 142, 142v. He was named to only seven committees in this Parliament and made only one recorded speech, and that was merely to clarify a legal point.93CJ vii. 542a, 542b, 545a, 576a, 580b, 581a; Burton’s Diary, ii, 346. A newsletter plausibly attributed to him is more revealing of his political views at this juncture. Writing in February 1657, he declared his preference for a Cromwellian monarchy, limited by the terms of the Remonstrance (what would become the Humble Petition and Advice), over a Fifth Monarchy or the rule of the major-generals: ‘for they act arbitrarily and on principles of necessity, which is an evil counsellor among good men’.94Clarke Pprs. iii. 90-1.

He was returned for Berwick again in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, but apparently made no greater impact at Westminster in 1659 than he had in 1657-8.95Berwick RO, B1/11, ff. 192, 194. He was named to six committees, including that of 5 February to supply the northern counties with a learned and pious ministry.96CJ vii. 600a, 600b, 622b, 627b, 637b, 638a. In a letter to the protector, probably written some time in early or mid-April, he was critical of what he perceived as a tendency at Whitehall towards ‘arbitrary government’. He urged the protector not to dissolve Parliament, citing the example of Charles I, who ‘broke three Parliaments one after another [those of 1626, 1628-9 and the Short Parliament], and how fatal that was to him, succeeding times have abundantly declared’.97Beinecke Lib., Osborn Shelves fb67, f. 91.

As an informant of the royalist spymaster, John Mordaunt, 1st Viscount Mordaunt, by January 1660, Rushworth applauded the resolve of Lord Fairfax and General George Monck* to secure the re-admission of the secluded Members or the calling of a ‘free Parliament’.98CCSP iv. 555, 516. While Mordaunt commended him to the king as ‘honest’, the secluded Members reportedly regarded him as their ‘darling agent’, and when Monck re-admitted them to the Commons in February 1660, Rushworth was appointed secretary to the council of state.99Add. 21425, f. 215; CCSP iv. 570; Clarendon SP iii. 694; HMC Leyborne-Popham, 169; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 399. He and Widdrington were returned to the 1660 Convention for Berwick, but though he was listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement, he was once again a bit player at Westminster.100Berwick RO, B1/12, f. 12; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘John Rushworth’. In February 1661, he was employed by the lord treasurer, Thomas Wriothesley, 4th earl of Southampton to conduct a wide-ranging investigation into the administration of the king’s revenue, having been recommended ‘for his zeal to do his Majesty service and ... his fitness for the said employment’.101CTB i. 215-16. He apparently declined to stand for election to the Cavalier Parliament, busying himself instead with his work as a treasury solicitor, parliamentary man-of-business, counsellor-at-law and professional intelligencer and newsletter writer.102Add. 32095, f. 40; Sheffield City Archives, WWM/D729; CTB i. 417, 645; HMC Portland, ii. 147-51; Hutchinson Pprs. ii. 174, 206. He had need of all the gainful employment he could find, for in 1664 he agreed to pay £3,000 as a portion to his eldest daughter on her marriage to Sir Francis Fane, grandson of Mildmay Fane, 2nd earl of Westmorland.103Lincs. RO, 1-FANE/3/1/B/3; ‘Sir Francis Fane’, Oxford DNB.

At some point in the 1660s or early 1670s, Rushworth was employed by the colony of Massachusetts as its London agent at a salary of twelve guineas a year.104Green, Hassam, Winthrop jnr. ‘The Bahama islands’, 50. And in 1667, he became secretary to the new lord keeper, Sir Orlando Bridgeman*, whom he had known during the 1640s.105Sl. 1519, f. 172; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 495. He was a friend of the ‘country party’ MPs Sir John Hewley* and Andrew Marvell*, and in 1677, when he unsuccessfully contested the 1677 Berwick by-election, he received the support of the town’s large Dissenting interest: ‘he being then, as always before, esteemed no great friend to the Church of England and prelacy’.106HMC 9th Rep. ii. 447; Ath. Ox. iv. 282; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘John Rushworth’; D.R. Lacey, Dissent and Parliamentary Politics in Eng. 1661-89 (Brunswick, NJ, 1969), 435-6, 440-1. He was returned for Berwick to all three Exclusion Parliaments and was marked ‘honest’ by the 1st earl of Shaftesbury (Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*).107HP Commons 1660-1690.

Rushworth’s last years were blighted by debt and alcoholism. When John Aubrey saw him shortly before his death he had ‘quite lost his memory with drinking brandy ... his landlady wiped his nose like a child’. He died on 12 May 1690 and was buried two days later in St. George’s church, Southwark.108Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 209; ‘John Rushworth’, Oxford DNB. He left four daughters but no will – not that he had any estate to bequeath.109HMC Portland, ii. 164. He was the only member of his family to sit at Westminster. His enduring life’s work, the Historical Collections, appeared in four parts between 1659 and 1701 – the last two being published posthumously.110Oxford DNB. A second, and more commonly used, edition was published in eight volumes in 1721.